David Shrigley fans, take note: Shrigley will be signing copies of his new book What the Hell Are You Doing? The Essential David Shrigley TONIGHT at 7pm at  Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North Ave., Chicago. Tomorrow night, he’ll be speaking at Columbia College Chicago’s Stage Two from 6:30pm – 9:30pm, 618 S. Michigan Ave., 2nd Floor. Quimby’s will be there both nights to sell the hell out of his books. Should be good! And stay tuned over the coming months for Duncan’s interview with Shrigley on the podcast (dates still TBD). Full details on tonight and tomorrow’s events below:

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? The Essential David Shrigley

“David Shrigley is probably the funniest gallery-type artist who ever
lived.” -Dave Eggers

“With a casual gesture Shrigley points to that hideous shape whose
name I’ve never known—and then he names it. And the name is
profoundly, embarrassingly familiar. I’m laughing while frantically
searching for a pen, so desperate to capture the feeling he has
unearthed in me.” -Miranda July

David Shrigley is the rare artist that can comfortably walk the fine
line between pop culture and high art. While he’s animated videos for
musicians such as Blur and Bonny Prince Billy, his work can also be
seen in world renowned museums such as MoMA and the Tate Modern, and
his highly distinctive style has been on display in galleries in New
York, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, and beyond. He is also clearly a
madman.

The aptly named WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING: The Essential David
Shrigley [W. W. Norton & Company; October 24th, 2011; $35.00
hardcover] is an outrageous compilation of his illustrations, comics,
photography and sculpture. His crude drawings and unexpected
compositions are at once childish and clever, and each depiction oddly
sincere. They capture the morbid humor of Edward Gorey, the absurdity
of a Monty Python sketch, and the peculiar perspective of a Charles
Addams cartoon. In short, this beautiful, full color collection is an
indispensible introduction to one of contemporary art’s most
fascinating and provocative minds.

The pieces in this book are an eclectic and encompassing
representation of Shirgley’s interest in the surreal. From a
photograph of a hot dog (affixed with googly eyes and tucked
comfortably into bed) to childlike drawings of humanity’s most
grotesque members (a man drinking a goblet of blood, captioned simply
with “CHEERS!”) this book is a both a celebration of condemnation of
humanity’s most base urges, fears, and delights.

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? is remarkably bold, and Shrigley leaves
no topic untouched. Through colorful commentary, he explores
everything from clowns to caffeine, sexuality to God, and all the
delightfully inappropriate bits in between. You would be hard-pressed
to find, in any other work of art, a match to Shrigley’s satirical
brilliance. As Will Self points out in the introduction, “Shrigley’s
photographic works suggest the refined eye of someone sent back from
the future beyond the looming apocalypse, charged with assembling
images that, while ostensibly of the mundane, nonetheless explain how
it came to pass that humanity destroyed itself.” By turns unsettling,
moving, and gut-wrenchingly funny, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? is a
revealing glimpse into an offbeat, darkly comedic, and utterly
hilarious artistic mind. For more info: davidshrigley.com/.
Tues, Sept 20th, 7pm at Quimby’s Bookstore 1854 W. North Ave., Chicago
Wed, Sep 21st , 6:30pm – 9:30pm at Columbia College Chicago – Stage
Two 618 S. Michigan Ave., 2nd Floor.…Quimby’s will be there to sell
books.

These events are co-sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore, Columbia College
and AIGA Chicago.

Quimby’s Bookstore    1854 W. North Ave Chicago, IL 60622   p:
773-342-0910  f: 773-342-0998  quimbys.com

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I am an unabashed and biased fan of comics–the integration of text and imagery connects the whimsy of fantastic worlds, flip reflections and twee confessions to the more  transcendental preoccupations available in illuminated manuscripts or, even, Jung’s famous Red Book. Given the deep pockets of Hollywood super hero blockbusters, it’s easy to forget that comics mean much more than our tight-clad, cape and mask “Here I come to save the day.” In the following interview, I had the chance to talk to Chicago-comic artist/writer Sara Drake. We discuss the form of comics, the flexibility their formal structure affords, its relationship to gender and (!)  her forthcoming trip to Cambodia. Come November, Drake is going to Phnom Pehn with the help of Arts Network Asia and Anne Elizabeth Moore to teach a 2-month class on  self-publishing and comics to young women.  Together they will explore and suss out the medium alongside the ethos of self-publishing and dissemination. What does it mean to share one’s own reflections? How or why would this be significant?  As the center of this discourse, comics become a cross cultural stimulant, exhibiting once more their hybrid form.

Caroline Picard: In addition to your own work as a visual artist and writer, I  know you do a lot of work in the city; you run Ear Eater, a collaborative reading series and have also curated visual exhibits. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your various creative endeavors and how you feel them working together in the routine of your life.

Sara Drake: I come from a specific mid-western DIY mentality, rooted in communal and local sharing of how culture gets produced. Most of what I do is about supporting or interacting within a community of other people which then becomes a lens I use to view most everything that gets created. There’s this great Joan Didion quote that I keep coming back to, “I write to find out what I’m thinking.” I tend to engage in different things all the time and consider a lot of what I do, whether I’m curating an experimental poetry reading in my apartment, making comics, or just hanging out and doodling with friends, as a process of becoming. I don’t particularly want to separate or categorize things, the hybridity, for me, is what’s important. I think the hybridity is what attracted me to comics. No one really knows how to think or agree upon what they are culturally. I find that when people talk about comics, they describe them in terms of other mediums (literature, film, poetry). Comics can do all sorts of weird, crazy things, and they exist on this personal, experiential scale. It allows me to engage with an idea or experience in an array of ways, depending on what I’m interested in investigating.

SD: Well, I would be hesitant to define “comics” as a genre. Comics are a medium, like poetry or literature or painting, a way to express or convey oneself. I’m actually having a hard time answering your question, I’m not exactly sure what “kind” or “genre” of comic it is that I make. I’ve never liked the labels like “graphic novel” or “experimental comic” because the titles don’t really make sense to me. Comics have always been lowbrow, underground, or something that the mainstream world didn’t deem valuable. Right now, so much in comics is changing, and changing very quickly. I am a direct product of that change too, which is both unsettling and curious. Being able to graduate at an art school and say that you’ve made comics is a pretty recent development, and one worth paying attention too. I have to hope that the self-taught-ness that has been so much apart of comics history doesn’t  get lost or forgotten in younger generations of cartoonists who encounter the medium for the first time at art school.

SD: Holy moly! There are so many different ways to talk about hybrids when we talk about comics. Perhaps the one that I see as most important is that a comic is time-based. Time can exist logically: from one panel to the next. Time can exist simultaneously and also sequentially: you could depict a single setting that has many actions that happen within that setting, each at different times. Time can hop around at random and sometimes gets lost between panels. As a reader, you can go forwards and backwards. Comics just work on perplexing levels depending on how you want to interact with them. Even the lenses that I use to read comics are always shifting, one day I may pay a lot of attention to the writing of a comic, then the next to the drawing style and how it relates to the mood or tone, and this list could go on and on.

CP: Recently you’ve been part of a project spearheaded by Anne Elizabeth Moore examining the way lady drawers (comics) are under-represented in the comic world. How did you get involved with this project and what has your role been? How does the project shape your expectations/visions for your own work as a lady drawer? 

I’ve always been involved a community that has had a vocal sensitivity to issues pertaining to gender and identity. More specifically though, my partner at the time was Anne’s research assistant. Through proximity to Anne’s project, gender discrimination and disparity became a part of my daily conversation and head space. Once you start looking at the rate of women in practically all comics anthologies you can’t really help but keep seeing a problem most everywhere you look. I was then asked to do the cover of the Women’s Comics Anthology, and later helped with Anne’s new Ladydrawers column on Truthout. My involvement thus far has been helping to create media to make the issues more visible. Although the people who should get credit for inspiring my awareness are all of the intelligent and inventive students who have participated in Anne’s class at SAIC or who have collaborated on gathering statics. My involvement with Ladydrawers has definitely opened some uncharted dark waters for me. On a weird personal level, I have a lot of close friends in the comics industry who feel attacked by the argument. This often becomes a heated debate or a bedraggled attempt at discussing the issue. Which, for me, becomes a daily issue of having to think seriously and critically about what is at stake when we ask questions about participation within a given medium. On a different level, the project has enabled me to work with a lot of amazing people, including Anne. I see Anne’s interest in working with young people uncommonly admirable. Her presentation of herself and her ideas are really infectious within the SAIC community and pretty soon, EVERYONE wanted to chat it up about gender and comics during downtime. So the project creates and allows participation within a community, and one that is centered around questioning cultural production at an art school and on a broader scale. Also worth noting, I probably wouldn’t be going to Cambodia to teach comics to ladies if I hadn’t become involved. So, you could say Ladydrawers really stimulates global media creation – I don’t want to think that that is so far off from the truth.

CP: You’re also in the middle of a kickstarter campaign to raise money to go to Cambodia as part of fellowship. Can you talk about what you would do there and how the project came together? What is the Arts Network Asia? 

SD: The project, Independent Youth-Driven Cultural Production in Cambodia (IYDCPC), is based on and was founded by Anne’s collaborative independent publishing work in Cambodia. (read all about it in her really amazing and generous book, Cambodian Grrrl: Self-publishing in Phnom Penh, CANTANKTEROUS TITLES.) I first heard about the project through Anne herself. I happened to be at the right place at the right time, and the right place was an art exhibition with her work in it. We bumped into each other, and after chatting for a while she pulled an unassuming business-like card out of her pocket with a website on it. Anne said she could give me a thousand bucks to go to Cambodia. Who in their right mind would pass up an offer like that? Everything about that moment was weird and doesn’t sound like real life. I remember that evening I decided to apply not really thinking that a proposal to teach and make comics would get accepted. Skip ahead five months later and I’ve got a plane ticket and a bunch of bristol board rearing to go teach comics in Southeast Asia.

We are still in the planning phase of what I will actually be able to accomplish while I am there. As of now, I am traveling into Phnom Phen, Cambodia for two months beginning in November. I intend to teach a comics and self-publishing course to young women in conjunction with local collaborators. The goal of the course will be to offer a space in which young women can share their own ideas, and to promote real media creation in a cultural space that has historically denied women the ability to do so. We will also be working towards creating an archive of student work using local resources and available networks. The project will be documented via a comics blog and hopefully a digital archive for future students or just interested Cambodians to have access too. I have aspirations to self-publish or to create some sort of document of the comics I make while I am there to exist in the US.

Arts Network Asia was established by an independent group of artists, cultural workers and arts activists from Asia—I think, originally, Singapore, and come from the theater world. They are a grant-making body that encourages and supports regional artistic collaboration. They’re deeply invested in fostering an engaged cultural community across Asia, and I’m so honored to work with them, since they see local value in what i’m doing in Phnom Penh—which is so much more important than “international” value. Or “cool points.” Anyway, they’re great to work with, very supportive. They just want to make sure Cambodians have access to interesting ideas.

CP: What is it about Cambodia that has inspired this project? Are your interests specific to Phnom Penh?

SD: Phnom Penh is where I have a network of support already in place, due to Anne having already done work and reporting there. To answer the question, I do need to be aware that all of my current knowledge of Phnom Penh (and an entire nation) has been acquired through media and not through direct experience. I will try my best to be honest. And actually, seeking out media and information about Cambodia in the US is really frustrating at times. In one way, it’s important for me to see the disparities between how the US tends to represent Cambodia and my actual experiences of being there.

From my understanding, there is little to no educational structure in Cambodia, so providing a potential structure or a place to view structure becomes, potentially, important. Historically, Cambodia has accidentally forgotten about women’s education. After the Khmer Rouge destroyed Cambodia’s intellectual and cultural life the country has been in the process of rebuilding after it’s tragic past. School’s being rebuilt in the 1990s didn’t necessarily discriminate students on the basis of gender but strict traditional gender roles, lack of female housing options, and economic imperatives made young women’s participation within an educational system really difficult. Comics currently being produced in Cambodia are mostly made and distributed by NGO’s and promote comics as a way to help combat low literacy rates.  I’m hoping teaching will encourage real media creation that can exist outside of this system.

I feel really responsible, although I’m not entirely sure I can define what it is that I am responsible for. It’s a really bizarre space to occupy, and I learn to deal with it by being open to being wrong and naive often. The more I seek information about the history of Cambodia, I notice how whack a lot of the media that the Western world has to offer is, and how little I actually know or understand how globalization or a nation in poverty works (or in reality doesn’t). I also, have a difficult time locating myself and my own thoughts on women’s rights within a culture I’ve yet to experience, where the rules are completely different than how I would normally perceive them. I’m really excited and anxious about trying to encourage a bunch of young women to wield a medium of expression, in my case comics, with very little working knowledge about how comics or even self-expression exists for them.

CP: From an artistic perspective, do you feel like your anticipation for this trip has inspired/influenced your creative process?

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Deb Sokolow, "Dear Trusted Associate" (detail), 2008-2009. Graphite, charcoal, ink, acrylic on paper and on wall, approx. 40 feet long. Installed at the Van Abbemuseum in 2008 and at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2009-2010.

Deb Sokolow invokes You, the audience. When engaging her work–wall drawings rife with text-narratives that revel in heist, hijinks and mystery, You are not a passive bystander. You are implicated as a character in her web, because she always writes in the second person. I spent some time talking to Deb about that second person device. It strikes me as particularly interesting because of its self-reflexiveness. Rather than sharing the artist’s gaze, looking through the lens of a camera say, the audience suddenly identifies with the model. You/We are in the drawing. You/We are being watched. Deb Sokolow is looking at us. Like an unnerving Welcome mat, Sokolow gives you a platform on which to stand.

Caroline Picard: How would you describe your development as an artist? Do you feel like there are different stages of Deb Sokolow work?

Deb Sokolow: Good question, maybe it’s a question I’d be able to answer better 10 or 20 years down the road. I’ve only been working in this current vein since 2003. That year, I was smack-dab in the middle of grad school, and it was the year that I had an art crisis; I realized I didn’t know what the heck I was doing or wanted to do as an artist. I had no personal investment in anything going on in the studio, so I stopped making work. I went home. I watched movies and ate Chinese take-out. “This is so much better than making art,” I told myself. But then when I started asking myself what was so compelling about watching movies, I realized that it was the stories, the narrative form that I loved, that I could get lost in. This was an A-ha! moment for me, because prior to this, I was making these blobby shapes out of glue and arranging them on table tops. It was boring. So boring! So I moved into working with the narrative form, making large, diagrammatic drawings on paper or multiple papers, always narrated by an anonymous, unreliable protagonist who’s only ever referred to as “you” and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years up until a couple of months ago where I decided to make a break with this, keep using the “you” but develop a new framework for the narrative and a new way of presenting it. So, in answer to your question, I guess I could say that I’ve recently entered dynasty #2, which is actually a pretty exciting place to be. Read more.

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I received a copy of Arty Party in the mail a few weeks ago. Created by Sara Drake and James Payne the comic came about while taking both an art history and comic class at the same time. As their website notes; “Arty Part started when Sara was having trouble writing one panel gags for her comics class. The easiest answer to this was, of course, to make fun of artists. I posted the initial three we made together here. We were tonally and visually inspired by The New Yorker cartoons but also by the over-the-top stupidity of Johnny Ryan’s Angry Youth Comix and Ivan Brunetti’s Haw!. The material came directly from the History of Art 541 course taught by Kris Paulsen that I took last fall. The class was based on David Joselit’s book American Art Since 1945.” I have seen some of Sara’s other work and enjoyed the quick read. Banalization has a pretty sweet viewer set up for the comic itself, but if you are interested in purchasing a copy either check out the following locations:

Quimby’s
Boxcar Books
The Curiodrome
Mahan Gallery
Used Kids Records
Wexner Center for the Arts Store
Wholly Craft

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Also Mark Staff Brandl gave a video interview with Columbia College while in town that is fun as well.

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2008 photo of the Sepulveda Pass Fire; View Through the Sepulveda Pass (Mike Meadows/Associated Press)

The Getty Museum on Fire? Not so far, according to the latest L.A. Times report. Thankfully the Center’s evacuation seems to have gone smoothly. Sad to say, but this kind of disaster is a regular occurrence in SoCal, and it’s not the first time the Getty’s been threatened by advancing flames.  Here’s hoping everything’s back to “normal” quickly. For the rest of what’s been happening so far this week, read on…

*Jason Foumberg of NewCity reports on the cessation of Individual Artist Grants this year, and in forthcoming years, from the Driehouse Foundation.

*Arts Stimulus Funding and the Art Economy: Hrag Vartanian at Art 21 explains it all for you (extremely clearly and well; especially useful for those of us who suck at math).

*In Chicago, interest in building a South Loop art scene is on the rise, but can it really happen in this economy? (Chicagoist).

*Art Baloney (via C-monster); but Regina Hackett’s spirited arguments in defense of the much-maligned meat make for a far better read, imho.

*Lynn Becker does it again: my fave architectural blogger gleefully deconstructs the wedding photos of a fab young couple who got married at the Art Institute (Edward Lifson took the gorgeous pics). Edited to add: I only just realized that “Lynn” is a he! Whoops.

*Sequential Chicago: a new website devoted to the Chicago comics scene (via Windy Citizen).

*Chicago artist Todd Chilton interviewed at Neoteric Art (via MW Capacity).

*Artist Stephen J. Shanabroock’s chocolate waterboarding sculptures, now on view at  Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York (via Boing Boing).

*Sarah Jessica Parker talks to Artnet about her partnership with Bravo on The Untitled Artist Project (via Art Fag City, who also has an exclusive interview with the show’s casting director Nick Gilhool).

*Gallerist/blogger Edward Winkleman’s book “How to Start and Run a Commercial Gallery” to be released July 14th by Allworth Press. Click here to preorder the book on Amazon; Bad at Sports interviews Winkleman about running his own art gallery on Episode 169 of the podcast here.

*Check out the British Council and Whitechapel Art Gallery’s The Fifth Curator competition, for aspiring curators outside the U.K.

*Still, I don’t have one: app art for the iPhone and ipod Touch (Rhizome Inclusive).  Here’s what’s thought to be the first music video shot on the iPhone.

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R. Crumb's Book of Genesis (via boing boing)

Here’s hoping Meg’s sister “Peanut” Manuel kicks some ass at the US Boxing Championships!!

*Bruce Nauman’s Topological Gardens wins Golden Lion for best Pavillion at Venice Biennale (Art 21).

*John Baldessari and Yoko Ono receive Golden Lions for lifetime achievement in Venice (Unbeige). Go Santa!

*Marguerite Horberg plans Porto Luz, a new artistic center for Bronzeville (Chicago Weekly).

*What to wear during an Orange Alert? interviews Green Lantern Press editor Tobias Bengelsdorf.

*This site could become indispensible: The Auteurs.com, which lets you stream hard-to-find foreign films directly to your computer. Pretty inexpensive, and some are even free (via Avant/Chicago).

*Google sends cease and desist letter to Yoooouuu Tuuube creater David Kraftsow: read Rhizome’s interview with Kraftsow about it here.

*You need ideas? They got ideas, lots of ‘em: Ideasonair.net (via Artipedia).

*Eight museum shows you won’t be seeing in L.A. anytime soon (plus other cancelled shows across the country). Can someone scoop up MOCA’s cancelled Luisa Lambri show and bring it to Chicago? Pleeeaaase? (Culture Monster).

*World of Warcraft: The Exhibition (via Provisions Library).

*Drawing the webiverse: The Internet Mapping Project (via boing boing).

*Even the Louvre is worried about its future now (Unbeige).

*I am so pre-ordering this: R. Crumb’s upcoming Book of Genesis comic;  excerpted in the New Yorker. (via boing boing, which has scans of the excerpt available on their website).

*Berwyn resident John Sisto discovered to have kept over 3500 religious artifacts and antiquities from Italy, 1600 of them stolen. (New York Times, Chicago Breaking News).

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via Booooooom!

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

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BAS Boston’s Matthew Nash talks to comic artist Liz Prince about her work, and her excellent book “Will you still love me if I wet the bed?”

Go, right now, buy it.
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